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Listen in to Colorado’s KFRC at 12pm on Monday the 30th and you’ll be lucky enough to hear the dulcet tones of the lovely Kramies. He’ll be talking about his music, his upcoming French tour and may even play a tune or two. And if you have not had the...

Everything about ‘Inventors’ is absolutely perfect: the chord sequence, in one of Kramies‘ usual weird tunings; the shimmering lead guitar work by David Paolucci; Todd Tobias’s production – and it’s all wrapped up in just over 3 minutes....

Be prepared to strap yourself in as we present the first single from Les Limbes’ brilliant debut self-titled EP. ‘Hypersonic‘ mixes adrenalised rock heft with atmospheric pop dynamics creating an instrumental that is both mesmerising and incredibly...

The wonderful Cafe del Mar have just dropped their latest compilation, Sunscapes, featuring the track ‘Only For a While’ from Hidden Shoal’s sonic mastermind Markus Mehr! The album is a beautiful collection of ambient gems featuring artists such as...

A beautiful sister mix to Markus Mehr‘s previous Kitsch before Glitch mixtape. This time around Mehr takes us from David Sylvian to Thomas Köner to Aphex Twin to The Beatles and beyond. Let’s hand it over to the man himself to explain, “This is the...

There’s so much to cover, some killer stuff has been filtering through our in box this last month since we went off radar – one thing that immediately hit us like an oncoming wall was this little darling. New single from Kramies finds the author of some of the finest and most sublime ethereal sonic hymnals to come our way in recent times shimmying up to forge a new old acquaintances with Grandaddy man Jason Lytle here taking up production duties. Available as a free download ‘the fate that never favoured us’ is to simply put it – breathless. A delicately spun cosmic carnival teased upon the same unseen fragile structures that hold stars in the night sky, this demurring honey deceptively arrests all the time transmitting its lunar love noted opines across the celestial voids as though the result of some star crossed love in embarked upon by Sterling Roswell and a certain J Xaverre. Bliss.

You never know what to expect from Hidden Shoal, post-rock, electronica, ambient, folk, it could be anything; the people operating the Australia-based independent label don’t bind it to just one genre. If it’s good and they like it, they’ll release it. One of the latest gems from Hidden Shoal is a stimulating 4-track, free download EP aptly titled To Set The River On Fire. The concept: two Hidden Shoal artists remix each other’s music, or, set each other’s rivers on fire if you will. English dream-pop artist Chloë March has reconstructed a track from the latest album by German experimentalist Markus Mehr, and vice versa. The results are incendiary and seductive.

Mehr took March’s “Ember” and turned it into a multilayered, futuristic and electrifying beast. The track surges forward savagely, throbbing and twisting, but Mehr has beautifully preserved the caressing expressive charm of the original, in fact, he even intensified it. It’s a cutting edge, erratic sonic roller coaster bursting with electricity, craftiness and otherworldliness. An absolute stunner. March, on the other hand, has set a different kind of fire in Mehr’s minimalist ambient river, “Buoy,” a mystical and slightly dark fire that burns slowly and sensually.

The EP also includes the two original pieces. This collaborative effort really ignites the imagination and will surely leave, and probably has already left, many listeners craving for more. We here at Igloo Magazine would be absolutely thrilled to hear March and Mehr setting more of each other’s rivers on fire, in the form of a full-length album.

The six tracks of Elisa Luu’s Enchanting Gaze are mosaics made of fractures. Each piece is more than cohesive enough to stand as a composition, like the string-inflected “Sabadilla,” with which the collection opens, or the pluck’n’drone of closing track “Bro…” — but within each piece the source segments stand sturdily alone, so much so that the compositions themselves threaten to fall apart, to fall into parts. This isn’t a criticism. Quite the contrary, it’s the very solidity of the source material from which Enchanting Gaze is constructed that gives it strength. Luu refers to the work as “post-ambient.” Others might cite minimalism, whose rigor the work reflects, event if it favors tonal phrasings and occasional rhythmic whimsy, as on the creakily industrial “B.P.M.,” over overt patterning. This is a phenomenal set.